


Claw and Shield

by JessicaPendragon



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Eventual Romance, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 11:50:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3935731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessicaPendragon/pseuds/JessicaPendragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bunch of short fics based on the Kiss Prompt on Tumblr for my guilty pleasure of Hawke x Cassandra. SFW for now, will update if necessary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Surprised Kiss

Cassandra does  _not_  look for him after she tumbles from the rift. She waits for the Inquisitor, Hawke and Loghain to emerge into Adamant’s courtyard, but not just for him. That would be absurd.

Herah rolls through the rip in the world, but Cassandra cannot breathe out in relief just yet. The Inquisitor seems unharmed despite the gloom look on her face, and worry beats inside Cassandra’s breast. So she waits, fingers dancing around the hilt of her sword, but  _not just for him_.

Hawke bursts onto the heavy slabs of stone without his usual grace and crumples down to his knees. Before she can think of her actions, Cassandra rushes forward, dropping her shield and sword to grab onto his shaking arms.

“Champion, are you all right?” She looks up to see the Inquisitor snap the rift closed. Loghain is nowhere in sight. “It’s just you? Where-”

Hawke doesn’t wait for her to finish. His hands wrap around her cheeks as he launches forward and plants his lips against hers. Surprise sings through her, along with some other emotion she doesn’t care to entertain. The kiss is hard, rushed, and before Cassandra can think of pounding him into the pavers, Hawke pulls away with a hoot.

“Maker, am I glad to be back! I will not be doing that again. Varric!”

“Still alive?” Cassandra scowls as the rogue’s voice grows louder at her back. She prays he did not see what just happened. “Kissing the Seeker is probably not the best way to ensure your continued survival.”

Of course he would see, that insufferable dwarf.

“Sorry about that. I got caught up in the moment.” Hawke says and holds out a hand to help her up. She thinks of batting it away, but she is too distracted by her warring thoughts and accepts his offer. She is happy that he is alive, of course, but it’s nothing more than being grateful for an ally’s safety. It cannot be anything more.

“I…” Cassandra clears her throat when they’re finally standing, trying to clear her mind from this sudden, bright haze. She tries to ignore the fact that he has not let go of her hand. “I accept your apology. I am pleased to see that you made it.”

Hawke grins. “That makes two of us.” Somewhere close by Cassandra hears the Inquisitor speaking to the assembly and the noise catches the Champion’s attention. For a moment, that casual disregard he wears so easily slips and she sees something deeper in his blue eyes. 

“Excuse me, duty calls.” As he moves to pass her, he gives her hand a warm squeeze before letting go. “I’m glad you’re all right too, Cassandra.”

She can hear Herah speaking with the Wardens and Hawke, but the soft way his tongue rolls over her name echoes like thunder within her ears. He has never called her anything but Seeker or Lady Pentaghast in that ridiculous tone of voice and she is alarmed at how the notion makes her feel.

“Doing okay there, Seeker?” She notices the smirk in Varric’s voice without even looking. 

The noise she offers him in return is filled with all her patented annoyance, but she doesn’t make the mistake of letting him see her face. She’s sure the clever criminal will see something she doesn’t want to show. “I am fine, Varric. We should see if the Inquisitor needs assistance.”

She walks away towards the Inquisitor and the others without another word. And it is absurd, insane, ill-advised, but she does not deny the fact that she looks for him this time.


	2. French Kiss

Cassandra slides her sword from the last Venatori in their way. The long journey back to Skyhold has been delayed at every opportunity by Corypheus’ forces as if the villain seeks revenge for what happened at Adamant. This alone is the second ambush they have met today and it’s beginning to strain her already frayed nerves like an itch that won’t go away. 

“Son of a nerd humping, mother f-”

“You all right, Hawke?”

“Does it sound like I’m all right, Varric?”

Much of the blame for her annoyance can be placed on current company. Cassandra turns to find the Champion and the Storyteller surrounded by a mess of corpses themselves. At first she was somewhat excited Hawke would return to Skyhold with them before setting out to Weisshaupt, but now thinks often about forcing the rogue north with a swift kick.

Currently Hawke hunches with a hand to his shoulder, momentarily shoving Varric away before returning to the position.

“What is the issue?” she asks as she approaches.

He turns to show her his right side. An arrow juts from the meat of his arm. The tip sticks out towards her coated in the Champion’s blood while the far end has broken off and lost its fletching in their skirmish. “It was either this or take that last bastard’s sword through my gut.”

“Getting slow in your old age?”

“I was enjoying early retirement until you, yet again, dragged me into another pit.”

Cassandra steps between the two friends before their banter gives her another headache. “Solas or Dorian can heal it, but the arrow must be removed first. Here, I can do it.”

When she reaches for him, Hawke practically jumps to get away from her. “Don’t touch it!”

“Do you intend to continue with it hanging from your arm until we reach Skyhold?”

“No, but believe it or not, I have an aversion to pain. Could I at least get blissfully drunk first? Some sort of healing spell?”

Varric sighs. “Just let the Seeker do it.”

“Fine.” The Champion leans forward, but as soon as she grazing his skin he jerks back. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

Cassandra tries to grab him, but the same thing happens again and she lets out a heavy growl. It is time to switch tactics and perhaps enact a fair amount of payback against the Champion. “What were you thinking when you kissed me at Adamant?”

“I…what?”

“It is a simple question.”

“I wasn’t really thinking.”

“Good. Because it was a horrible kiss.”

“I beg your pardon? Are you suggesting I’m a bad kisser?”

“It certainly lacked passion. I am beginning to believe Varric’s tales of your romances were as heavily embellished as the Arishok duel.”

“I..wha..you,” Hawke sputters out a few words before his brows crease down. He stalks closer, injury forgotten. “And I suppose you are just a master of the art form?”

“I know what makes a good kiss, of course.”

“Pray tell then, Lady Pentaghast. What must a man do to meet your standards?”

Cassandra steps to meet him. “It is slow at first, exploring, as if remembering what it is like to feel another person’s lips on your own. Then you pull away to glance into each other’s eyes to find a spark burning there. When you come together again it is an explosion. Breathes mingling together, pulling velvet into your mouth and tasting lust on the tip of your tongue.”

The Seeker reaches out to Hawke’s forearm and slowly, gently, lets her hand rise up his arm. Her heart is fluttering beneath heavy armor, but she keeps her features as cool as she can. It is difficult to do with Garrett’s eyes watching her, growing darker with every word she speaks.

“Then you sweep inside, not a battle but a dance, that leaves you breathless with every turn and wanting for more. It tingles down your spine when you angle it just so, and then…” 

She doesn’t realize how close they’ve come together until she feels Hawke’s breath ghost against her cheek. Cassandra remembers the brief touch of his lips on hers and wonders what they might taste like if she had the chance to explore them. It would be easy to lean forward and find out.

“And then?” Hawke prompts and the soft words clash through her mind harsher than any war song. Her gloved fingers have reached their destination and it is time to end this before Cassandra faces an enemy she is not ready for.

She yanks the arrow through his flesh and Hawke all but screeches. He bows over, clutching at the wound and dancing on quick feet. “You’re welcome for the lesson,” Cassandra says, throwing the arrow shaft into the dust and strutting away, ignoring the alarmed and knowing look Varric throws her way.

Through the pain and confusion Hawke follows her until the Inquisition’s forces swallow her up. He can’t believe he fell for that, but there is something in that iron gaze that melts away his defenses. Garrett has come to expect all manner of things to be thrown in his path, but he doubts he could have never expected  _her._ When he’s caught his breath he lets out a deep laugh, a challenge to a worthy adversary. 

“I’ll remember it.”


	3. Jealous Kiss

Cassandra is not one to frequent the tavern and prefers to unwind with a wooden practice sword or a leather bound book instead. The night is still relatively young on their second day back in Skyhold and she’s trying to concentrate on the new chapter clutched in her grasp, but the noises from across the yard are a distraction.

The tavern is bright in the darkness. Through every open window, voices and music flow out with jubilant abandon. It is a bothersome thing for one who wishes for quiet, but it is not the sole reason for Cassandra’s drifting mind. She knows Hawke is in there. 

It’s becoming painfully obvious that she’s more than infatuated with the tales of the Champion. She is becoming infatuated with  _him._ The man. The hopelessly infuriating man. She must be going mad. This cannot be what she thinks it is. It can’t be…

Cassandra slams her book closed and jumps from her seat. Swift feet rush across her room and down the stairs. The cool breeze of the mountains brushes against her cheeks as she leaves the forge behind. She has always been a woman of action. She will get to the bottom of this and there is only way to do so. One person that can give her the answer she seeks.

The heat and noise of the tavern hits her with a toppling force as she pries open the door. Her eyes are instantly drawn to the clamor in the center of the room and widen at the sight. Hawke dances atop tables pushed together, twirling about a woman with blonde hair and billowing skirts. They move quickly beneath the talented fingers of Maryden who plays with legs swinging on the steps above.

Cassandra slips to the side, unnoticed, and watches. She is not surprised to see Hawke so skilled in this art as well. She has witnessed his grace and poise on the battlefield. Rogues must be swift and agile on their feet and Hawke is no exception. She watches his muscles flex as he spins the woman up into the air, dips her in between his legs. Warmth that has little to do with the bodies pressed around her and everything to do with how his body moves flares inside her stomach as Hawke dances close to his partner. Their hips shift as one and she shivers as he runs his hand across a bared shoulder before grasping gently to the slim column of a neck.

They move apart, come back together, and the music swells to a fever pitch Cassandra feels in her heart. She holds her breath as the woman is dipped low in Hawke’s arms and the music finally breaks away with one last trilling note. 

The tavern erupts into excited cheers and thunderous applause. Cassandra smiles, ready to clap along with them, until Hawke bends down and captures the dancer’s lips in a dramatic kiss. Against logic, the crowd seems to grow even louder, but all Cassandra can hear is a fitful buzzing in her ears at the sight. Her limbs feel shocked into place and grow cold even as steady flames lick from her neck to creep across her cheeks. 

She knows the feeling although she has not felt it in some time. The two figures atop the table spring back into standing and the blush blooming across the woman’s face causes the sick, sticky feeling of jealousy to surge even larger. She needs to leave. Cassandra moves quick towards the exit and catches the gaze of the last person she wishes to be noticed by. The shining merriment in Hawke’s flickers, falters, as recognition douses the light. He opens his mouth, for what purpose neither of them will know, for Cassandra turns and escapes into the yard before anything more can happen.

She has discovered her answer, but the truth does not make her feel triumphant this time.


	4. Kiss on the Hand

Hawke does not accompany them to the Winter Palace, and yet she still looks for him. It’s foolish considering she was one of the ones to demand he stay behind. After all, he is not Inquisition, a fact she has tried to rectify many times already and has only received that smirk and a witty decline to her invitation. He won’t ever change, a thing she enjoyed in the sweeping stories told of the Champion, but her opinions have changed since she’s face his stubbornness in person.

It is doubly foolish because she does not want to see him at all, not after that incident in the tavern. Her face heats to think of it, to imagine the way he must pity her or the excuses he might make. She is frustrated enough tonight as it is, with the over abundance of buffoonery and pageantry, the assassins in the shadows, the disdain dripping from the very walls next to the heavy drapes and expensive chandeliers.

And yet she looks for him once again, checking the entrances and exits for suspicious characters and his specific frame, wonders how his laughter would sound like bouncing off the high ceilings and painted glass. She tries to keep her eyes adverted from the dance floor with all its smiling faces and bodies pressed close, tries to keep her foot from tapping out rhythms that are lonely cords within her heart. Every time she looks she remembers Hawke dancing in the Herald’s Rest and it is too easy to imagine herself the one in his arms, too hard to hold when she knows she wasn’t. 

“Ugh,” she says loud enough for the nobles nearby to hear, but it is more for herself. There is no room for this nonsense. She needs to be alert, sharp, not distracted by things of little consequence. Things with large muscles and a dashing smile and that voice that-

Someone grabs hold of her arm and yanks her onto the dance floor. Cassandra digs in her feet, ready to battle as her voice rises like a war cry. “Are you mad?”

“I’m not sane, that’s for sure.” - that voice that rumbles down her spine and does so now, much closer than in her memory. Hawke is here, dressed smartly in the regal colors of his house, pulling her close and sweeping her further into the throng of dancers while she is momentarily stunned. “You look quite lovely this evening, Lady Pentaghast.”

“You…what are you doing here?”

“Drinking, mostly. Spying. Drinking while spying. It was suggested I might be able to do more on my own than as part of the Inquisition. None of that is important at the moment, however.” He sweeps them around in a circle swiftly, a move that has her head spinning and her heart hammering as she’s forced to hold tight to his jacket. “Not when I’ve found such a beautiful partner.”

She remembers his partner at the tavern, the way Hawke kissed them, the way he had kissed  _her_. As they make a turn on the floor she stomps hard upon his foot, smirks to herself when he bites back a groan. “I suppose I deserved that.” She stomps again and those around them glance their way at his yell this time. “And that.”

When she tries for a third time, Hawke slips behind her, sticks his leg out to knock her off balance. She does not fall but floats, bending as he tips her back like all those couples in her romance novels. Her face heats as his comes close, the blue of his eyes a sky she feels like she’s lost within, falling up and down and every which way as he holds her still. The mischief in his gaze shifts to something far more dangerous, something sincere, and she can’t find a breath.

“But I know I don’t deserve you or your time. I would like to change that, if you’ll give me the chance.” Slowly he lifts her back up and it feels like the rest of the world no longer exists, the ballroom frozen in time around them in a sea of colors and lights. It is just them, this impossible moment she’s thought about before but never thought could be real, never thought she might actually  _want_  it for anything more but daydreaming. 

He smiles again, not with the sharpness of his namesake but with the softness she’s seen from afar as he talks of his sister, or laughs with Varric, or lifts the children of Skyhold up on his arms, and she thinks she wants more than fantasy. “Just…don’t step on my foot again if you agree.”

She doesn’t because she does, and his smile widens, a gleefulness he hides with a quick clearing of his throat and a bow meant to sweep the whole room off its feet. But it is her hand he takes, and with his eyes on her he peels back the leather glove and kisses the top of her hand, lingers longer than necessary and yet not long enough. His lips on her skin it feels wondrously sinful, like a secret in plain sight.

“Thank you for the dance, Lady Pentaghast.”

As he lets go of her hand the room spins back into clarity, music and voices and the clack of shoes rushing in to fill the void of him. He melts so easily into the mix of people, gone within a blink of an eye to leave her alone. Cassandra catches the looks of a few other people behind their gilded masks. She puts on her best glare and makes for the shadowed crowds around the sparkling tile, daring anyone to get in her way. They move aside, let her escape and escape her wrath, and she finds solace in a corner hidden from their view.

When Cassandra is sure she is alone, she presses the back of her hand to her cheek and smiles.


	5. Kiss on the Cheek

Someone has been in her loft. There isn’t anything out of place. Her bed is made up the same as she left it this morning, her clothes and books neatly stacked, the window open to let in the fresh air. Everything is where it’s supposed to be, but there is something new sitting atop the table in the center of the room.

It is a red box wrapped with white lace, the bow large and beautiful. There is no tag to indicate its source, no reason she can think of for its purpose. It is certainly not her birthday, but it is…Her heart flutters, fingertips reaching to feel the lace before pulling back abruptly. No. No one here would have her in mind for today’s holiday. Clearly a mistake made by the runners of Skyhold. 

Decided, she grabs the package and tucks it under arm as she makes her way back towards the forge’s stairs.

“What, don’t like my gift? You don’t even know what it is.”

The box almost flies from her hand as a startled cry flies from her mouth. Hawke shifts out of the shadows, his smirk caught in the dying light from outside. “How…how did you get in here?”

“Rogue,” he says, almost offended.

“I mean.” Cassandra takes a breath, plants her feet firm as he approaches. “Explain what you are doing in my quarters.”

“You told me to woo you. What kind of paramour would I be if I did not lavish you with gifts on one of the most romantic days of the year?” He travels up to gently rest against her arm and she holds her breath. “I know you know what day it is. I’ve celebrated quite a few in Kirkwall, but getting to spend a Kissing Day with you would put them all to shame.”

After a moment, Cassandra clears her head and her throat. “Do not get your hopes up too soon, Champion.” She glares at him suddenly. “It’s not another song, is it?”

Hawke lets out a boisterous laugh, eyes sparkling with a quality she finds impossible to resist. “No.”

“Good. You are a terrible singer.” She takes the box back to the table and slowly unties the ribbon, careful not the break the delicate weave. Less care is given to the package itself, paper ripped and discarded without a thought. Inside rests different things, from a bundle of her favorite flowers, to chocolates and cookies shaped like hearts. There is another ribbon, red and wrapped many times around a book, but she can make out the bright hair of a certain-

“No!” She snatches it up, brushes away the silk. “It is! The next chapter of  _Swords & Shields_. The last one ended in such a cliffhanger and…how did you know?”

Hawke leans into his hip with an all too pleased grin. “The Inquisitor told me you mentioned it. She was planning on asking Varric to write it for you but didn’t get around to it yet.”

“And you convinced him?”

“I might owe him something, but there are perks to being the best friend of Thedas’ most popular author.”

“I…” As the initial excitement fades a little, doubt creeps back in. “You must think me very silly. I know these books are terrible, but I find them to be-”

He cups her chin. “If they make you this happy, I don’t think they’re terrible at all.”

It is hard to describe the feeling swarming within her, something so warm and full that is colors her cheeks and seems to vibrate out of her skin. She feels it more and more around him, the craze of meeting the Champion fading to something more real, something that sticks to her ribs and wants to stay. “Thank you, Hawke.”

“Garrett.”

The red on her cheeks deepens. “Garrett.”

“You’re welcome, Cassandra.” 

She loves the way he says her name and can’t help but sighing, the noise sharpening when she realizes something. “Oh, but I have nothing to give you in return.”

“It is  _Kissing_  Day after all.” He turns his head and taps one cheek. “One kiss from you and I will be satisfied.” 

That she can give, but as she leans in she has a better idea. A mad idea. When she is close she tips his face towards her, and instead of stubble it is the softness of his lips that she meets. It is his turn to be surprised and she feels emboldened by it, stepping into his body for more. It takes a few seconds for him to respond, but then an arm is around her, pressing into the small of her back, a hand tilting her head to deepen the kiss. And it is perfect- here where soot collects from the fires below, with the taste of wine and elfroot on his tongue, the long day in the crumple of her clothes. It is perfect because it is him.

“Well that was more than I expected. You’re always catching me off guard, Lady Pentaghast,” he says when they part, nose bumping against hers in a rare moment of softness, and she melts a little more. When he moves away she feels colder, takes a step after him like they’re stuck together. “Should I…?”

“Stay. I mean, you could stay.” She looks around for something to keep him and grabs for the book. “Have you read them before? It is not exactly poetry but it could be fun to read together.”

“I’ll stay if I get to do all the voices.” 

Cassandra rolls her eyes but can’t keep down her amusement. “If you must.” He returns to her side and she hopes he stays much closer from now on. 


End file.
